The restraints flipped away from the chair. Luke massaged his wrists and studied his cybernetic thumb. A faint line ran from the center of his nail to his middle joint; none of his fingers had the same mark. Once free, the listening device and transceiver had to go.
“Nice and easy,” Owl said. He backed out of the carrier, keeping his aim toward the rear of the cabin. Beyond him, a red and white barrier crossed in front of Wandsworth prison’s imposing Victorian gatehouse. “Get your ass moving.”
A woman cop waited outside, holding a rifle by her side.
Dull cranks ticked from behind the gate, and it creaked ajar. Luke had no idea how many more claycops sat in the front of the carrier, but if he failed to move, numbers would only increase against him. He rose from the chair and walked toward the doors. If Lynch, Meakin, and these goons anticipated him quietly shuffling off into their sunset, they were sorely mistaken.
Owl pointed his pistol toward the barrier. “Over there.”
The split second lack of concentration, lazily giving directions with his weapon, opened a small window of opportunity. Regardless of whether it was Owl’s inadequate training or an assuredness born through years of bossing around law-abiding citizens, a moment had present itself.
Luke thrust from the back of the carrier, grabbed Owl’s pistol with both hands, and ripped it free. His momentum carried him past both cops, he tumbled to the ground and scraped to a stop on his back.
The woman’s hand jerked against her rifle. Luke aimed and fired. The pistol kicked; a round zipped through her, creating a neat metallic hole in the center of her chest, and ricocheted off the side of the carrier.
She stumbled back, looked down at her wound with open-mouthed expression, and raised her rifle. Luke fired twice at her face. Her body froze, changed to a light blue translucent color, and the rifle dropped through her ghostly image and clattered against the road.
Owl lunged forward and growled. His heavy frame landed on top of Luke, knocking the breath of him and pressing him against the concrete. He clamped his right hand around Luke’s windpipe and smashed his left fist into the side of his head.
Stars flashed in front of his eyes after the jarring blow, and he gasped for air.
Owl cocked his fist for another strike.
Luke jabbed the pistol’s muzzle against his temple and fired.
A transparent frozen image of Owl’s snarling face hung above him, and his weight vanished. The cop’s fist had stopped inches from Luke’s jaw, and like his colleague, Owl transformed to shimmering dust.
At the front of the carrier a door slammed. Luke scrambled to his feet, knowing he needed to move fast before more cops deployed or spilled out of the prison gate. He leaned against the back of the vehicle and checked the change lever on the side of the pistol. It had three settings: Stun, Taser, and Live.
The difference between Taser and Stun wasn’t immediately apparent. Luke left it on Live. He assumed this setting fired conventional rounds, confirming Owl’s intention of blowing his brains out if he didn’t toe Timetronic’s line. He imagined the surly cop back in the PCC, booting his claystation in frustration and configuring an immediate redeployment.
Footsteps moved slowly toward him. Luke crouched and looked between the carrier’s chunky wheels at a pair of boots. He spun around the side of the vehicle and aimed at a female, dressed in a light blue coverall and matching cap.
“Wait!” she shouted. “I’m only a driver.”
“So?”
“I’m not clay. Don’t shoot.”
Luke lowered his pistol a couple of inches and scrutinized her face. Everything looked real, though she displayed no visible signs of fear. “Take me to Zone Seven,” he said.
“I can’t.”
Luke stepped toward her. “Can’t or won’t?”
An intermittent siren blasted from the prison, and its gate cranked fully open. A tracked vehicle, with grilles protecting its windows, crunched up an internal road and approached within two hundred meters. Six armed figures, dressed in riot gear, advanced around the sides of it.
“Move,” Luke said. “Now.”
She rapidly nodded, climbed into the cockpit, and slid across a long leather seat to the wheel.
Luke followed her inside and slammed the door. “What’s your name?”
“Lucy.”
“Step on it, Lucy.”
The carrier’s engine thundered, and they shot forward, heading back toward the urban heights. Lucy focused on the road ahead, steered across to the opposite lane, and overtook a cruising transport pod.
“They won’t follow,” she said. “We’re out of their jurisdiction. It’s down to claycops from here.”
“Got a knife?”
“What?”
“Do you have a knife? I need something sharp.”
“There’s a multi-tool in the glovebox.”
Luke opened a compartment to his front and rummaged through a collection of unrecognizable objects until finding something similar to a Leatherman pocket survival tool. He flicked open the blade, held out his thumb, and cut a deep slice along the faint line. Stinging pain throbbed through his hand, and creamy liquid oozed out of the wound.
Lucy glanced across and grimaced. “Are you crazy?”
“What does a transceiver and listening device look like?”
“Depends on the type.”
“You seem calm about this?”
“There’s a few clayports between here and Zone Seven.” She looked at an overhead display. “Rotorcrafts have already deployed. You can’t escape without help.”
Three luminous green dots flashed across a map of London toward a slower moving blue one, which Luke guessed as the carrier’s position due to its southwestern location.
“Avoid the clayports and get me close.”
“Whatever.”
Lucy swung the carrier to the right, and they roared down a narrow road. Gleaming offices, each branded with the logos and letters of the five corporations, whizzed past the window. Citizens along on the paths stopped, stared, and moved from the edge of the curb.
Luke parted the flaps of skin on his thumb and smudged away liquid to reveal shiny metal parts. Two tiny spheres, connected by a thin wire, had been attached to the side of his artificial bone. He dug his fingernails underneath both and snapped them off.
The pain continued to throb, but it was a small price to pay in exchange for denying Lynch the ability to listen to his every word. He wiped the spheres on his shirt and held them toward Lucy.” “Recognize these?”
“Mission accomplished, for what it’s worth.”
“Open my window,” Luke said.
“You’ll have to use the gunroof.”
Lucy hit a button on the central dashboard, and a square section of the ceiling whined to one side. Luke stretched his arm out of the gap and threw the spheres.
“You’ll do a hundred years for killing those cops,” Lucy said. “If they catch you.”
“I didn’t kill anyone.”
“Technically you did.”
“Technically that’s bollocks.”
Lucy tried but failed to force down her smile. “It’s a law designed to protect them. How else could the government and Timetronic make people take claycops seriously?”
“How about if they acted professionally? Lynch is the main problem I intend to fix. You can quote me on that.”
The carrier descended an incline and entered a tunnel beneath a massive stone communications mast, peppered with different sized satellite dishes. Lucy cut the overhead screen, slammed on the brakes, and they screeched to a shuddering halt.
Luke raised his pistol.
She grabbed his daypack from behind the seats and dropped it in his lap. “Take the emergency stairs, go through the construction site, and the road leads straight to Zone Seven’s western entrance.”
“What?”
“I’ll head to the south side. You forced me to do this at gunpoint, right?”
“Why a
re you helping?” Luke asked. “You’re part of the Lynch mob.”
“It’ll all collapse sooner or later. Maybe you’re doing me a favor. I’ve never seen anyone fight like you before.”
“Why stick your neck out?”
“My boyfriend went missing three years ago after they caught him credit hacking. No trial, no sentence, no nothing. He just disappeared into thin air, and I’m sure he’s in that bloody transport management center. We can’t keep our heads in the sand forever. Spark our change.”
“If I get my way, you’ll have him back. Lynch doesn’t scare me.”
“I hope you’re right.” Lucy reactivated her overhead screen, studied it for a couple of seconds, and leaned close to him. “Go, you’ve got two minutes.”
Luke ripped the fleece from his daypack and wrestled it on. “Don’t suppose I can use your cap?”
She tugged it off and passed over. “Just go.”
“Can a pistol get through the gate scanner?”
“Yep. It’s Timetronic issue. Don’t believe the lies about only letting straps through. The Lynch mob do what they like.”
Luke nodded in appreciation and placed the cap over his head, satisfied with his temporary change of appearance. He tucked the pistol under his fleece, kicked the door open, and sprinted for the emergency steps.
The carrier accelerated away and rumbled around a bend. He knew Lucy had exposed herself to potentially dangerous consequences but her motive was logical, and she wasn’t the only one suffering in silence at the hands of Timetronic. His own treatment, the old cops’s story on the Waltham Abbey balcony about business leaders and politicians going missing, and Maria telling him she couldn’t find information on patients in the facility, led to the obvious conclusion of people chilling in transport systems against their will.
The emergency steps led out to a half-built tower on the opposite side of the street. Three rotorcrafts circled a distant area, and a siren wailed. He suspected it wouldn’t be long before the Lynch mob figured out he wasn’t in the carrier, and hundreds of them deployed to join the hunt, making entry into Zone Seven his immediate priority.
Chapter 24
Luke buried his hands in his jean pockets as passed the construction site. A few workers, dressed in high visibility vests, moved around the ground floor shell of a new tower. Two gave him a cursory glance but nothing close to serious regard—only a skirt would guarantee their individual attention.
Two rotorcrafts powered overhead and joined the other three, swarming over what he guessed was the carrier heading to the southern end of Zone Seven. He didn’t expect Lucy to implicate herself in his escape, but she had bought him crucial time before the Lynch mob switched their attention to the tunnel and its outgoing routes.
The Zone’s dirty steel boundary blocked the road ahead. Luke increased his speed to a brisk walk, keeping his face down and away from streetlight-mounted cameras. He figured Timetronic had the live feeds synchronized with VR images of citizens, allowing another form of tracking in the urban pool. Lynch and his obsession with integration guaranteed it.
Luke stopped in front of the entrance’s chrome scanner, it hummed to life, and its arm and moved up and down his body, searching for any electrical contraband. A bolt on the turnstile gate clanked open, and he wasted no time pushing through it.
The sight of weeds sprouting through cracks in the pavement, bright cafes, and decaying balconies on late twentieth century apartments. came as a welcome relief compared to the bland buildings and camera infested streets leading up the boundary. He joined the road running through the center of the zone, grateful for Maria’s previous guided tour of the streets, and took in the smells drifting from takeaways while he headed for the main square.
Enough people wandered the pavement in similar style clothing to make him relatively inconspicuous, but he kept his eye out for anything remotely claytronic, ready to draw his pistol at a moment’s notice.
By his reckoning, he’d left the Cairo environment an hour ago, which gave him little time to warn Walter, if Helen hadn’t already done so after reading between the lines of his capture at Waltham Abbey. Both were under serious risk from Lynch, now the mad doctor was armed with the knowledge of their collusion, and Luke expected him to move swiftly.
The Mega Dive loomed up on the left; with its neon lights off, and front shutter rolled down, obviously closed for business. Luke crossed to the cobbled central area and observed the Flamingo Apartment’s glass-fronted lobby. Two people, in dark blue uniforms, sat on chairs facing outside. In the alley next to the building, another lingered by the fire escape. Too many obvious Lynch mob elements for him to consider going anywhere near the place.
Judging by their presence here, Claytronic goons had likely captured Maria, and Lynch’s words in the Cairo environment about adding her to his facility assets rang through Luke’s head. He was determined to stop her being plugged and it heightened the already mountainous stakes.
The five rotorcrafts thumped across the sky at a low-level and raced over the western entrance toward the tunnel; it wouldn’t take long for the cops to trace his route back to Zone Seven. He turned and headed back toward The Mega Dive.
Luke detected the sound of bottles clinking from an alley to the left of the bar. He went to investigate, under no illusion the cops in the Flaming lobby didn’t have the front of the building under surveillance, but he couldn't wait for the perfect opportunity.
A short, bald man backed out of a side entrance and dropped a plastic crate onto a stack of three.
“Afternoon,” Luke said. “Is your boss around?”
“We’re closed. Come back at ten.”
Luke moved farther into the alley, out of the Flamingo’s view. He pulled his pistol from under his fleece and extended it forward. “I asked if your boss is around. Not for opening times.”
The man’s eyes widened. He jerked back, bumped into the doorframe, and raised his hands. Luke advanced, forcing him to stumble along a narrow internal corridor and into the main area of The Mega Dive.
The place looked exactly like when he had first entered; glowing emerald lava lamps on each table, intense white bulbs lining the back of the bar, and smashed up pieces of consoles decorating the walls.
A woman behind the bar ducked down, and the calypso music stopped.
The man continued to back away and bumped into a chair. It toppled over and clattered against the floorboards.
Someone in a white flannel shirt, sitting on a table close to the bar, turned and glared across the empty room. The butterfly plaster across his nose gave him away. A legacy from when Luke had introduced his forehead to Carl’s nose during his first evening out of a transport system.
“What do you want?” Carl snapped.
“A meeting with Walter. It’s urgent.”
“You won’t get one waving that thing around.”
Luke lowered his pistol. “I haven’t got time to fool around. It’s in both of our interests.”
“Joe, make yourself busy,” Carl said to the bald man, who quickly vanished through a door at the side of the bar. “I hear they took your girlfriend.”
“What do you know about that?”
“A friend at the PCC relayed a message. She’s in solitary.”
Luke remembered McClaren's virtual torture, and his hand tightened on his pistol grip. “There’s more pressing issues. Would you betray Walter?”
“What’s that supposed to mean?”
“It’s a simple question. Would you sell him down the river for credit?”
Carl scowled and stepped to within inches of Luke’s face. “I’ve been with him for fifteen years. As if I’d betray him to a relic like you.”
“How about to Lynch?”
“Lynch?” Carl shook his head. “Unbelievable. Who the hell do you think you are?”
The next part required a leap of faith. The fact that Carl had worked under Walter for fifteen years gave Luke enough confidence to go for it. Every tin-pot mafia
boss needed a couple of informed sidekicks to do their intimate bidding.
“Gideon Lynch knows about Walter’s connection to Helen.”
“What?”
“You heard me. He’s known for the last hour. Have you looked in the Flamingo lobby?”
Carl backed away and eyed the shutter. “I thought those cops were here for you.?”
“When did they arrive?”
“We picked them up on our receivers an hour ago.”
“I escaped twenty minutes ago. They didn’t initially come here for me, but I’ll be back on their agenda.”
“Are you sure?”
“Lynch knows about Helen,” Luke said to reinforce the point. “You need to act.”
“Wait here,” he said and headed through the same door as the bottle collector.
Luke straightened the fallen chair and sat down. The menace of Timetronic’s forces outside played on his mind, and he estimated it wouldn’t be long before Meakin and Lynch ordered their team to bash down The Mega Dive’s entrance.
With no legitimate government, law enforcement, and media channels available to challenge the existing regime, he knew he had to act fast and deliver three knockout blows: the capture of Gideon Lynch, Helen installed as the rightful president, and a public display of the facility’s hidden horrors. For this to happen, he needed help.
After two minutes Carl craned his head through the doorway. “This way.”
Luke followed him downstairs into a cellar, packed with hundreds of steel barrels. Carl weaved his way through to another chamber, used to store battered dartboards, stacks of old comics, a pool table with a ripped surface, and a dusty full-sized model of BB-8.
The third chamber had three large steel doors at the end. Each had a digital temperature reading by their side and a frosted central window.
“Lynch got in touch just before you arrived,” Carl said as he made his way toward the middle industrial-sized freezer. “He wants a meeting with Walter in ten minutes.”
“I take it he’s not going?”
“Not now.”
FAST FORWARD: A Science Fiction Thriller Page 17
